Reducing the cost of living and fixing the aged care system are voters’ two top priorities for the 2022 federal election, according to a new Australian National University poll.
The survey of more than 3,500 people found those two issues transcended the political divide with more than 60% nominating them as top priorities, ranking ahead of issues of more concern to Coalition voters, including defence against terrorist attacks and reducing crime.
A majority of voters also nominated strengthening the nation’s economy (54.4%), reducing the cost of healthcare (53.5%) and dealing with global climate change (52.8%) as top priorities for the federal government.
The findings come as Labor prepares to enter the final fortnight of the campaign with a negative ad spree targeting Scott Morrison’s handling of the economy.
The new ad, launched on Thursday evening, notes the Coalition “doubled our debt even before Covid” and that companies with rising revenues received $19.7bn of jobkeeper wage subsidies, which it says is “one of the reasons our debt has now tripled”.
“Some of that money could’ve gone to making your life a bit easier,” it said. “[Morrison] says he’s good with money, but that really doesn’t add up.”
Labor has been buoyed up by a string of public polls finding it retains a lead against the Coalition. The ANU poll found the Coalition’s primary vote had declined from 31.7% in January to 31.2% in April.
While Labor’s vote also fell from 36.3% to 34.3%, this was balanced out by a rise in the Greens vote from 14.2% to 16.2%.
The ANU poll did not calculate the two-party preferred result, but the study by professors Nicholas Biddle and Matthew Gray concluded Labor was in an “election winning position” with a “very challenging few weeks” ahead for Scott Morrison to turn it around.
Since the budget reply in March, Anthony Albanese has made improving aged care central to Labor’s pitch to voters.
Although the budget contained $8.6bn in cuts to petrol and income taxes, designed to lower the cost of living, Labor has argued these are temporary measures that will not permanently improve the cost of living, unlike its childcare policy.
The Reserve Bank’s decision to hike the cash rate to 0.35% on Tuesday has further raised the importance of cost-of-living in the election campaign.
Of the ANU poll respondents, 64.7% categorised reducing the cost of living as a “top priority”, which Biddle said was a view held by people intending to vote for Labor, the Coalition, or neither party.
“For Coalition voters, 60.8% said this was the highest priority. Among Labor voters it was even higher, with 68.8% saying the same.”
That was followed by fixing the aged care system, which 60.1% of respondents said was a “top priority”.
Increasing wages in the aged care system was a “top priority” for 43.2% of respondents, much higher than those who said the same of wages in the childcare system (29.8%).
Despite Australia approaching 5,000 deaths from Covid-19 this year, more than double the previous two years combined, dealing with the coronavirus outbreak was rated a “top priority” by just 36.5% of voters.
Perceived Coalition strengths of “strengthening the Australian military” and “dealing with the issue of migration” were much lower priorities, with 28.9% and 22.3% listing these as top priorities. Only 27.2% of voters thought fixing the budget was a top priority.
The ANU poll is a longitudinal survey, interviewing many of the same respondents since January 2020 when Morrison’s handling of the summer bushfires hit the Coalition vote hard, before it recovered due to approval of its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the April 2022 poll, the ANU study found Australians’ attitude to the vaccine program had improved greatly, with just 6.6% of respondents saying the rollout had not gone well “at all”, compared with 23.7% who said it had gone “very well”.
